LOVE MACHINE!

We are on this earth to love people. We are meant to learn, know, and practice this simple gift. It should emanate from us like rays of sunshine, bursting forth with determination.

I awoke with this obvious revelation coursing through me. I looked over at my husband, sleeping peacefully, and I wanted to hug him awake. I have known him for almost twenty years and I have loved the crap out of him. I mean it. You might not've known it, when we were hollering at each other over stupid things, like buying dirt bikes or paying the mortgage, but it's true. In all of that love-disguised-as-fighting we were getting to know each other.

Love isn't just being nice and compliant. It's telling the truth when you don't want to. It's saying how you feel about something that's been bothering you all day, whether it's stupid or not. It's fighting for the right to be yourself when bonding has seared you too close together. It's reminding each other why you got together in the first place. It's laughter till you pee. It's crying till you laugh. It's making babies, and breakfast, and chopping the wood. It's looking past morning breath and seeing an angel.

Love is incognito most all of the time. That is why boys hit you in the seventh grade. Hitting has nothing to do with love, but touch does. So immature people hit. Negative attention is better than no attention at all, right?

How can selfishness not be love, when we must love ourselves before we can love anyone else? How is it loving, to comply, when inside your spirit is telling you to do the opposite? Why is it seemingly easier to do the wrong thing, than it is to do right? Truth is love. You can't love what you do not know or understand. And getting to know people is a messy business, because half of the time, you don't really want to know what's inside. It means dealing with it. It means having to move out of your comfort zone into the unknown. Ugh...work! Love is work.

We search to know what meaning there is in our work. Why do I have this job? Why is it ME that has to do the dishes? Why am I the only one that cares about a clean floor? It's love. I LOVE organized space. We LOVE to pay the bills on time and buy the kids new jeans for Autumn. I LOVE to eat fresh Swiss Chard in the spring. Therefore we will keep on working and loving until we give up the ghost. We will put up tipi poles and dig in. We won't shirk the work, so the harvest of love is plenty.

The sages of old were right. Love is patient, Love is kind, and Love is long-suffering. I would add to that: Love is determined, and will-full, and meets the enemy at a RUN! We don't just wait if we want something. Not every time. We fight for what we can't live without. We love the crap out of it! When I swat the three year old, I love her! When I tell my husband my mind, I love him. When my kids say, “But, Mom...,” they love me. She listens. He listens. I listen. And in that moment, we fall into a deep, passionate, bonded love. We forge together and we don't give up on trying to understand each other.

Every night we pray before we go to bed. It sounds something like this, in our tipi:

• Thank You for this beautiful day. Thank you for my girls and my wife and my life. Thank You for the strength to go to work. Thank You for keeping us safe and healthy all of our days.
• Thank You for my family and for my home. Thank you for the sun and the rain. Thank you for health and please help us to be patient and kind to one another every day.
• Thank you for my sisters and my Mom and Dad. Thank you for our friends and dinner at Jeri's. Please help our baby to grow straight and strong. Thank you for keeping Mom healthy and help her have a good birth.
• Thank you for a wonderful life and good dreams....and help our baby to be really cute.
• Thank you for candy, and my sisters, and my swing, and...um...amen.

And so we know each other. And our hearts are glad because we are a family unit. And we will love, and strive to communicate, and work through each day together. These things make life worth the living.